


lover

by skai_heda



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Happy Ending, Introspection, Light Angst, Past Relationship(s), Post S7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:40:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24992431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skai_heda/pseuds/skai_heda
Summary: agnothesian.the state of not knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your behavior, as if you were some other person—noticing a twist of acid in your voice, an obscene amount of effort put into something trifling, or an inexplicable weight on your shoulders that makes it difficult to get out of bed.
Relationships: Deke Shaw/Skye | Daisy Johnson
Comments: 9
Kudos: 39
Collections: fill the daisy/deke tag with actual content 2020





	lover

**Author's Note:**

> fic summary and words are from the dictionary of obscure sorrows

##  **agnothesia**

_n._ the state of not knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your behavior, as if you were some other person—noticing a twist of acid in your voice, an obscene amount of effort put into something trifling, or an inexplicable weight on your shoulders that makes it difficult to get out of bed.

* * *

When Daisy looks at him, she cannot quite understand the feeling brewing in the pit of her stomach.

Maybe she loves him. Maybe she doesn't.

She has to consider this for some time. Maybe there was a moment that she fell in love with him, a moment when she stopped feeling angry whenever he spoke to her. A moment where he might have touched her—tending to an injury, passing her a file. A moment where he had touched her, and she did not mind.

Honestly, if Daisy was to figure out anything about herself, she must assume the perspective of an outsider. Because despite her secretive demeanor, she feels as though others know her better than she knows herself.

* * *

##  **onism**

_n_ _._ the frustration of being stuck in just one body, that inhabits only one place at a time, which is like standing in front of the departures screen at an airport, flickering over with strange place names like other people’s passwords, each representing one more thing you’ll never get to see before you die—and all because, as the arrow on the map helpfully points out, _you are here_.

* * *

Deke wants to see Paris. He wants to see the Great Wall of China. He wants to peer into the endless depths of the Grand Canyon, hold the black sand of the beaches in Iceland.

He likes to look at pictures of the world. In his bunk at the Lighthouse, there are boxes and boxes of National Geographic magazines. He could, if he wanted to. And he does want to. And still, he doesn't. He knows that no one really wants him there, but he can't just leave. The Lighthouse is his future—in every sense of the word.

Besides, how could he possibly see all those places? The world is bigger than a couple of boulders drifting aimlessly in space. The world is big and round, and there are a million places he wants to see. Given his life, he doubts that he'll live long enough to see them all.

He thinks of his multiverse theory. That maybe, there are infinite Dekes that have gone snorkeling in the Bahamas, climbed Mount Everest, seen the Amazon, traveled to the ancient pyramids, and have driven in New York.

If Deke could, he'd split his consciousness into a thousand pieces. A body for each place, each little corner of the world. 

But then again, how much of himself would be left in one body? Would he really even be Deke at all?

Would he feel as much as he does? His fondness for Nana and Bobo, the tidal wave of feeling for Daisy. His respect for Mack and Coulson, his understanding of Yo-Yo. Would he really be alive, if he existed everywhere all at once?

* * *

##  **scabulous**

_adj_. proud of a scar on your body, which is an autograph signed to you by a world grateful for your continued willingness to play with her, even when you don’t feel like it.

* * *

When Daisy first started training in combat, she used to fall a lot. 

Ward had been impatient with her, obviously. Always pushing her to be better, be like him, a firm insistence that she was better, stronger, smarter.

There had been something sharp in the place where they trained once. The corner of a metal box. Ward had knocked her over, and Daisy remembers the sharp sting on her leg, skin and flesh being sliced open, unzipped like a jacket. She hadn't completely minded—Daisy's always had a high pain tolerance. But Ward had taken one look at the dark blood seeping through her grey sweats and had practically lunged towards her, touch surprisingly gentle as he ran his fingers along the cut.

"It's a little deep," he'd said, gentle in a way that Daisy had not seen up until that point. He had looked up at her, and she still remembers the need to run her own fingers along the strong, sharp lines of his jaw. His hair had been messy—he had looked young. This was the Ward that still occupied her mind—immortal, young, devoid of anger. The Ward who had probably loved her, and had loved everyone else, too. A good man, not the one he'd actually ended up being.

"First blood in the battle," he'd said, with a mesmerizing smile. Daisy had never seen him smile like that before. "It's probably going to scar."

"Good," she'd said.

Now, in the Lighthouse, years later, she reaches down to run her finger over that scar. She thinks of Ward for the first time in a long time, and there's a dull beat of sorrow, deep in her brain.

It is also probably the only good memory she has left of Grant Ward.

* * *

##  **wytai**

_n_. a feature of modern society that suddenly strikes you as absurd and grotesque—from zoos and milk-drinking to organ transplants, life insurance, and fiction—part of the faint background noise of absurdity that reverberates from the moment our ancestors first crawled out of the slime but could not for the life of them remember what they got up to do.

* * *

Deke doesn't understand treadmills, oceans, or love. Not necessarily in that order.

Lake Ontario isn't an ocean, but it does seem like it from his point of view. It's almost impossible for him to imagine it, thousands of miles of water. It's a little scary, but it's a beautiful thought.

Deke can't comprehend skyscrapers. Towers built to the sky. Why would society ever want to do that? Is no one afraid of heights? How could they sit at their stupid desks at the top of their stupid towers, with nothing between them and a thousand-foot fall except a sheet of glass?

The modern world is absurd. People do things because they want to, not because they have to survive. It's absurd and Deke hates it, the absolute aimlessness he's fallen into without having to fight your way to living for the next twenty-four hours.

It's crazy how people do things for others rather than themselves. Deke just can't wrap his head around the magnanimous concept of _love._

Maybe Deke cannot love.

But how would that explain Daisy?

* * *

##  **liberosis**

_n._ the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.

* * *

Daisy wishes desperately that she could be like him. She wishes she could find joy in the color of the sky and the smell of candles. She wishes that she could force herself to be less cautious about things—ease out of the mindset of searching for the next threat. Relinquish her deathly tight grip on that feeling, the willpower to get up and fight.

Things would be so much easier if she could just revisit the sensation of being younger. Her childhood wasn't the best, but sometimes she thinks she would prefer that to being on alert at every minute of every day.

Daisy wishes she could let go long enough to love him. To love Deke, without worrying about him being evil, or him dying for her.

Because deep in her heart, she thinks that he would.

* * *

##  **exulansis**

_n._ the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.

* * *

Deke gets quiet, and nobody notices, because that's what they want. They want him to shut up so they can all return to their respective jobs of saving the world and everything else. But he _wants_ to talk—he wants to tell stories about the Lighthouse, some joke that an acquaintance had made, some crazy story about the Kree. 

And he had tried, sometimes. Because at least once every week, the whole team sits down and they talk. They spend time with each other, talk about their lives. Deke's told a story or two, but he's only ever been greeted with looks of confusion and faint disgust. 

He sits with them a few more times, but he doesn't say anything. He feels like an intruder, because that's exactly what he is. He's given up on trying to explain the complexities of his past life to them—their humor is decades apart, his stories not quite as interesting as theirs. Hell, even Enoch gets along fine with the rest of them, and Deke's fondest and best memories are left bounce around endlessly in his brain.

Sometimes, he feels like he doesn't exist at all. To anyone, not even himself.

He stops spending time with them. And he doesn't totally mind being alone—he visits the lake, walks through town. Reads his books, goes on drives (once he learns, that is). Maybe he could go back and tell him stories about his mom, but they wouldn't want to hear that either. Besides, memories like those hurt too much to be revisited.

No, Deke doesn't altogether mind being alone. But he spends an awful lot of time thinking about what would've happened if everyone else wanted to listen to him, just once.

* * *

##  **nighthawk**

_n_. a recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night—an overdue task, a nagging guilt, a looming and shapeless future—that circles high overhead during the day, that pecks at the back of your mind while you try to sleep, that you can successfully ignore for weeks, only to feel its presence hovering outside the window, waiting for you to finish your coffee, passing the time by quietly building a nest.

* * *

Daisy really only thinks about him at night.

She never gives him too much thought during the day—he is just another faceless agent in the base, another name that doesn't exist. But when she tries to sleep, she thinks of him. She thinks of how he doesn't speak to anyone anymore, thinks of how often he leaves the base. Daisy knows he is pulling away, fading into the meaningless fog of life.

(she dreams of him, too—phantom touches, unspoken words. a soft kiss in the dark, that Daisy never remembers but can always feel on her lips when she wakes up.)

Daisy could never love him. She's not interested in being responsible for yet another unwanted death.

* * *

##  **pâro**

_n._ the feeling that no matter what you do is always somehow wrong—that any attempt to make your way comfortably through the world will only end up crossing some invisible taboo—as if there’s some obvious way forward that everybody else can see but you, each of them leaning back in their chair and calling out helpfully, _colder, colder, colder_.

* * *

Deke is, quite frankly, a disappointment.

He's never actually been of any help to anyone, ever, if he's being totally honest with himself. And with Daisy? He's only ever been a screw-up. He's only ever pushed her away, rather than deserve her love.

Besides, she's told him that she's still in love with someone else. Someone who happened to be dead, actually. Deke honestly couldn't compete with that.

Deke knows a few things for sure. He knows that he loves Daisy Johnson, and he also knows that everything he does is wrong. He knows that every word he has ever said to her has made it even more impossible for her to love him—he knows that every action has made everyone else hate him.

Deke knows that he is wrong. His existence, his being. Everything he does will go against him—and god forbid anything ever actually goes well for him.

* * *

##  **keyframe**

_n._ a moment that seemed innocuous at the time but ended up marking a diversion into a strange new era of your life—set in motion not by a series of jolting epiphanies but by tiny imperceptible differences between one ordinary day and the next, until entire years of your memory can be compressed into a handful of indelible images—which prevents you from rewinding the past, but allows you to move forward without endless buffering.

* * *

"Deke," Daisy says, tapping his shoulder as he probably goes to leave the base.

"Whatever it is, I didn't do it," he says immediately. Sure, he's quiet, but the touches of boyish mischief have not yet completely gone from his eyes.

"You're not in trouble," she replies, suppressing a smile. "I just—need your help with a few things. SHIELD related, obviously."

He blinks. "You do?"

She really doesn't, but times have changed. And here she is—Daisy Johnson, making up an excuse to spend time with Deke Shaw. Just some surveillance reports that she could totally do by herself, but she decides not to.

* * *

##  **opia**

_n._ the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable—their pupils glittering, bottomless and opaque—as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there’s someone standing there, but unable to tell if you’re looking in or looking out.

* * *

Deke should find it suspicious, the number of things Daisy seems to need help with these days.

Or maybe it's good that she's finally admitted that she does need help with a few things. He thinks that Daisy tries to act stronger than she is for the benefit of others, and it makes him sad—probably because he's done the exact same thing in his old life. 

"That looks kind of concerning," says Daisy, looking a spike in activity on the monitor.

"Probably mafia business," Deke says, flipping idly through a file. "Though it could be related to an object that would be better off in our warehouse level. I checked charts of seismic energy and looked at data for energy surges in that area—definitely big numbers around the time that whole, uh, gang war started."

She looks up at him, and her eyes are suddenly freezing him in place. It feels strange, to be sitting close enough to her to make out the smaller details of her eyes, to see the reflection of different lights at the corners of her pupils. There's a total rawness to the moment, the act of looking into her eyes. It could've lasted hours—it could've lasted seconds. And it takes him a bit, but he realizes that she isn't looking at him with a touch of contempt—she's looking at him with a smile hovering on her lips.

"You're a genius, you know that?" she says, and her eyes dart back to the monitor, effectively shattering the moment. "That's amazing."

He snorts, waving his hand. "I try."

* * *

##  **rubatosis**

_n._ the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat, whose tenuous muscular throbbing feels less like a metronome than a nervous ditty your heart is tapping to itself, the kind that people compulsively hum or sing while walking in complete darkness, as if to casually remind the outside world, _I’m here, I’m here, I’m here._

* * *

Daisy loses her sense of calm around him. Her hands aren't quite as steady, her eyes not quite as focused. It isn't the way she was with Lincoln—staggeringly certain of what she wanted and how she was to obtain it. Not like it was with Ward, a linear progression from one space to the next. Indifference hiding attraction.

With Deke, she feels like a teenager again—brain spiraling into a thousand directions, unable to grasp onto one thing, one moment, one emotion. She doesn't hate him anymore, she knows that much. But she sits alone, trying to figure out whether she simply enjoys his company as a friend, or whether she wants him to hold her tight and kiss her.

She becomes startlingly aware of her heartbeat whenever she's around him—beats that turn unsteady, a drummer that has had more than enough to drink before a performance. An intruder, a loud, insistent pounding that echoes in her eyes, that she feels in her throat and her stomach and her toes. And in the small silences they share in between discussing things, her heard pounds so unsettlingly loud that she wonders whether Deke can hear it.

* * *

##  **ecstatic shock**

_n_. the surge of energy upon catching a glance from someone you like—a thrill that starts in your stomach, arcs up through your lungs and flashes into a spontaneous smile—which scrambles your ungrounded circuits and tempts you to chase that feeling with a kite and a key.

* * *

Daisy stares at him. 

Deke doesn't really know when it starts, why it happens, but he's reading a file one day, and he looks up to see her gazing at him with a plain, powerful intensity. She looks away a mere second later, determinedly keeping her eyes on the monitor before her. 

He can't say that he doesn't like it. There is something special about the feeling he gets whenever she looks at him—a pleasant shock of color and love, and he has to cover a fake yawn to hide his smile.

* * *

##  **xeno**

_n._ the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.

* * *

Daisy misses them, Ward and Trip and Robbie and Lincoln and everyone else who has left her. Loneliness is her greatest power, she thinks, rather than her _actual_ power. 

Deke is like a medicine for that feeling. Every smile and every conversation brings both of them back to the world of the living, breathing, and the loving.

* * *

##  **dream fever**

_n._ the intense heat on the skin of a sleeping person, a radioactive byproduct of an idle mind humming with secret delusions which then vaporize when plunged into the cooling bath of reality, thus preventing a meltdown that could endanger those close by, who tolerate the risk because it gives them energy.

* * *

Daisy falls asleep while they're filling out their reports one day, and he's okay with letting her rest for a while.

So Deke spends the next hour or so doing it himself, content with the warm silence that hangs over them like a blanket. The time he spends with Daisy has made him vastly happier in general, and he suspects that it's had the same effect on her. Within weeks, he's fallen into a perfect routine.

Although he still does not speak as much as he used to, does not let the details of his private reality slip through, he's not afraid of opening his mouth anymore. He hasn't really found a legitimate purpose, other than the need to just be alive and present within the walls of the Lighthouse.

He suspects he should wake Daisy, so he reaches over to set his hand on her shoulder. Her skin is not fever-hot, but it is warm, the customary heat of falling asleep somewhere other than your bed.

Deke decides to let her sleep just a little longer.

* * *

##  **rollover reaction**

_n._ when your dream about someone you know skews how you feel about them all the next day, an emotion you are unable—and unwilling—to shake.

* * *

_"It's beautiful, really," Deke says, crossing his arms._

_"It's just a lake," Daisy replies. "What's so special about a lake?"_

_Deke rolls his eyes. "I mean, I get that you've lived on Earth your whole life, but you should definitely appreciate this place more." He gives her a blinding grin. "It's awesome."_

_"Yeah, yeah," she says._

_Deke turns around to face her completely, his green eyes shining. She surges forward to kiss him, holding his face to hers._

_He smiles even more widely when she pulls away, still grinning to himself as he turns away, resuming his conversation while stumbling over his words just a little more._

_It is the perfect moment._

When Daisy wakes from this dream, Deke is still doing his work. Her stomach does a flip at the sight of him, and she can't help but notice him in a completely different light—observing with more care the lines of his face the patterns of his breathing. It's strange, a new feeling yet simultaneously familiar.

It occurs to her that it's been a while since she's had a nightmare.

* * *

##  **hanker sore**

_adj._ finding a person so attractive it actually kinda pisses you off.

* * *

It's honestly not fair. Daisy's beautiful, and it's really screwing up his attention span.

* * *

##  **contact high-five**

_n._ an innocuous touch by someone just doing their job—a barber, yoga instructor or friendly waitress—that you enjoy more than you’d like to admit, a feeling of connection so stupefyingly simple that it cheapens the power of the written word, so that by the year 2025, aspiring novelists would be better off just giving people a hug.

* * *

She can't believe she's admitting this, but she longs for his touch.

And every time their fingers make contact while they pass each other something, the feeling reaches deeper into her being and yanks those three delicate words farther out, until she finds them perpetually hovering at the tip of her tongue.

* * *

##  **heartworm**

_n_. a relationship or friendship that you can’t get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.

* * *

Deke knows they're at the edge of something, peering over a ledge and into an endless fog. The two of them are wrapped up in a bomb waiting to go off—a touch, a kiss, a word that will catapult them into unknown territory.

And he wants her, badly. Not in the dirty, uncomplicated way that most people think, but purely. He wants to stay up at night talking to her, he wants to kiss her forehead and he wants to _know_ her, better than he already does. 

He wants to go into that unknown world, and he thinks that maybe Daisy does, too. 

But neither of them will, for fear that it won't quite turn out as well as they think.

* * *

##  **jouska**

_n._ a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head—a crisp analysis, a cathartic dialogue, a devastating comeback—which serves as a kind of psychological batting cage where you can connect more deeply with people than in the small ball of everyday life, which is a frustratingly cautious game of change-up pitches, sacrifice bunts, and intentional walks.

* * *

It wouldn't be that hard to just say it, Daisy thinks. She suspects she's making too big of a deal over this. _I love you, I think I love you, I need you, you make me happy._

She constructs an infinite number of conversations in her head—a million different ways she could just be brave, and tell Deke exactly what she thinks.

* * *

##  **fata organa**

_n_. a flash of real emotion glimpsed in someone sitting across the room, idly locked in the middle of some group conversation, their eyes glinting with vulnerability or quiet anticipation or cosmic boredom—as if you could see backstage through a gap in the curtains, watching stagehands holding their ropes at the ready, actors in costume mouthing their lines, fragments of bizarre sets waiting for some other production.

* * *

Daisy's getting easier to read. For him at least. He wonders whether that's a good or bad thing.

Deke can see her, sometimes—really see her. He can see the flash in her eyes at a particularly good joke and the way she bites her lip in a moment of self-doubt. Deke has memorized the way her shoulders settle in a rare moment of inner peace, become familiar with the small smile that's so different than the one she spares for moments of success. Just a smile of the purest, smallest sort of happiness.

He feels like it's not something anyone else would recognize at this point, except for maybe May and Simmons and Fitz, who have known her the longest.

It's a brilliant, startling thing. And Deke feels pretty lucky he gets to glimpse into the clockwork of Daisy Johnson every now and then.

* * *

##  **fitzcarraldo**

_n._ an image that somehow becomes lodged deep in your brain—maybe washed there by a dream, or smuggled inside a book, or planted during a casual conversation—which then grows into a wild and impractical vision that keeps scrambling back and forth in your head like a dog stuck in a car that’s about to arrive home, just itching for a chance to leap headlong into reality.

* * *

Simmons somehow gets a giant bag of lemon-flavored candy into the base and hands it to Deke. It's a day of no particular importance to anyone.

"Why'd you—I mean, _thank you,_ but why did you give me this?" Deke asks, peering into the bag.

"I found some candy and it reminded me of you, so I decided to go collect some more."

There is an expression of pure, pleasant surprise, and for the next few weeks, it is burned into Daisy's brain, as she cooks up a thousand scenarios that would elicit that face. A compliment, a joke, a confession. She can't get that image out of her brain, especially as she continues to consider the vast range of reasons she could cause that small, incredulous smile to appear on his face.

* * *

They've been doing this for months, and they've fully sunken into their routine of doing SHIELD work together.

"Deke," Daisy says, and he looks at her, a question staring to form at the base of his throat. "I have to tell you something."

He frowns. "Okay. What is it?"

What follows is a deafening and kind of long silence, as Daisy opens and closes her mouth a few times, evidently unable to find the right words.

At some point, she abandons the purpose completely, leaning forward to kiss him. The kiss is simultaneously gentle and desperate, a word, a feeling, a sensation he'd been reaching for finally in his grasp.

"Daisy," he says against her lips, purely because that's her name and he loves it.

"I like you," she murmurs. "That was I was trying to say."

Deke smiles, and leans forward to kiss her again.

**Author's Note:**

> i saw a picture of jeff ward when he was younger and my head exploded yall better search that shit up RIGHT NOW
> 
> [here](https://twitter.com/heda_skai) is the twitter i just made lol


End file.
